Copycat
by Taisi
Summary: And then, so quickly no one saw it happen, the man is reeling back with a broken nose, the creature is swept up and away, and Luffy- cradling it safely against his chest- looks as surprised as the rest of them. (In which there are absolutely no miraculous returns, and old wounds ache before a rain.) Nakamaship, drabble.
1. Chapter 1

_(A/N: This was one of those birthday stories I started and abandoned; I rearranged a lot of stuff and it's pretty drabbley, but I wanted to share it anyway. Let me know what you think, and if I should make it a twoshot. C:)_

* * *

The creature quivers, eyes wide and round in small face, and darts a fleeting glance between each one of them, coming to a rest on Luffy; it goes still, focusing intently, and Zoro narrows his eye. The voices nearby are getting louder, shouting and thundering closer, and before any of the Straw Hats have time to move, the animal spooks, and sprints straight toward their captain.

"Hey!" Sanji shouts, making a grab for it; it dodges his arms nimbly, jumps at Luffy, and plows him over into the pond. He yelps and flails for an instant before hitting the water, and after a singular, startled moment, Nami sighs.

"We can't have _one _normal afternoon, can we?"

Usopp, Brook and Chopper are already fishing Luffy out, so Zoro turns his attention to the road just as a group of disheveled village men break from the trees out onto the tarmac. They hesitate, shoulders heaving, and look around- eyes landing in no time on the little band of pirates.

"You there," one of them calls out. "Have you seen a strange creature run by here?"

"It looks something like a cat, with long ears and a tail," another says helpfully, holding up his arms to indicate its size. "Has it come by here?"

"Uh," comes Usopp's voice, quiet and unnerved, "guys, you might wanna... "

Zoro turns, and disregards the muted sounds of shock and confusion from his crewmates in favor of analyzing the expression on Luffy's face; of alarm and uncertainty in equal parts. He's sitting in the shallow water, arms held up and away from the creature attached to his middle. As if feeling Zoro's gaze on him, his eyes snap up and lock onto Zoro's one precisely.

He looks as pleading as he ever has before when he says, "It turned into Ace."

Zoro's hand falls from Shusui's hilt like a stone, and as Robin covers her mouth, and Nami drops to her knees, and Sanji's fists clench painfully, and the others only _stare_- dumbfounded and afraid- Luffy looks back down, very slowly

and a young boy, with freckles and matted hair and a bandaid across one cheek, looks up.

* * *

Luffy probably would have sat there, stunned and unmoving, for a long time; but it's chilly, and there are clouds moving in that promise rain, so Zoro moves forward and offers Luffy a hand.

It does well in shaking the rubber boy from his stupor, and when he puts his hand in Zoro's, the swordsman hauls him to his feet. Luffy does a weird dance away from the creature in the water, circling around behind Zoro like he isn't even aware he's doing it, keeping his eyes locked on the child the whole time.

And he's shaking, but that could have been from the cold. Sanji slips out of his jacket, dropping it around Luffy's shoulders and fussing with it; he mutters under his breath as he straightens the lapels and smooths out the shoulders, but Zoro knows it's only an excuse to linger and search Luffy's face intently for any sign of hurt or distress.

After a few minutes, half of the crew shifting protectively and eyeing the thing in the pond, the other half inching over to Luffy and biting lips against a torrent of _"are you okays", _Luffy seems to come back to himself with a blink.

"What is this?" he asks plainly, looking at Sanji, who finally drops his hands and moves back enough to take a drag from his cigarette.

"Search me, captain," the blond murmurs. There's a slight tremor in his fingers that belies an utter rage. "But it's a nasty trick, and I'd like to find out who's responsible."

It's only when Luffy's involved that Zoro finds himself thinking along the same vein as that ridiculous love-cook; because as one, the two of them turn to the men crowded in the street with expressions that promise _retribution._

The one who spoke up first before throws up his hands. "We have nothing to do with that thing," he shouts. "It's caused nothing but problems for us here, we've been trying for days to drive it out!"

The villagers clamor, raising clubs and their voices in agreement; the little thing in the water whimpers, and Luffy flinches. Zoro cuts a sharp look at him as the mob starts to move past him to the water's edge, and Luffy meets it helplessly.

"Wait," Zoro says, for him. "What do you plan on doing with it?"

"Nothing, if it leaves quietly," an older man in the back spoke up. "We're not out to kill it, we just want it to _leave. _That thing has been a nuisance around here for too long."

_What's the right thing to do here?_

A man grabs the creature's arm, and it cries out and glares defiantly, scrambling and splashing up water in its attempts to get free, but it's all futile. It's dragged up onto the grass, coughing and gasping, face crumpling in its attempt not to cry-

-and then, so quickly no one saw it happen, the man is reeling back with a broken nose, the creature is swept up and away, and Luffy- cradling it safely against his chest- looks as surprised as the rest of them.

"I- " he starts, and falters. He looks down, and his arms tighten around the child; and when he looks back up, he's looking straight at Zoro. Wet, and with his hair plastered around his face, and Sanji's jacket, too-big and clinging to his shoulders, he looks young and pale and at a loss with the whole world.

"I don't know," he almost whispers and behind an expression that doesn't change, Zoro aches for him.

_What's the right thing to do?_


	2. Chapter 2

The creature clings to Luffy with tiny, scarred hands, and glares at the few who try to get near him with real hate. Even Chopper, trying to reason with the animal, only gets a silent snarl for his troubles; the boy's face twists easily in rage, the way Luffy's was so quick to smile.

"What's wrong with this thing?" Nami snaps, obviously doing her best not to sound as scared as she felt. Her eyes only leave Luffy's face for seconds at a time. "It's not acting anything like the real Ace!"

Zoro says nothing. He's standing opposite where Luffy's sitting against the glass of the aquarium bar, arms folded, studying the thing in his captain's arms. The villagers had watched with miserable understanding as the creature leaned its head on Luffy's shoulder; as Luffy shivered, and at the same time held it closer.

_"We'll find a place for it," _Zoro said for his captain, who said nothing at all, and the villagers bowed their head, in thanks or maybe apology, as the Straw Hats walked away.

"Maybe it can only change how it looks," Usopp suggests unsurely, and Luffy finally looks up.

His eyes are wider than usual, face pale, mouth tugged into a frown; but there's none of the anguish all of them are so afraid of, just a sort of stunned and unhappy bewilderment. And hands that simply won't unwrap from around the little boy's back and shoulders.

"What do you mean?" Luffy sounds doubly upset now, as if the entire world has stopped making sense now that his nakama are confusing him, too. "This is just like how Ace was when we were little." His eyes drop back to the freckled face, and his brow furrows a bit in uncertainty. "It's acting just like Ace. Exactly like him."

The boy looks up at Luffy with dark eyes, and Zoro sees it when the soft warmth folds into heat and hard edges as he turns to glare at Robin when she sits near Luffy's side.

Sanji's quiet, "How can that be?" is the only sound in the room, save for the soft ambiance of fish and water.

Zoro thinks of the polite young man who once visited their ship and bowed his head, asking them to please take care of his silly baby brother; and meets the livid, white-hot gaze of this fierce little boy when it's turned towards him without flinching.

"Hey," Luffy chastises, giving the child a little nudge; usually so perceptive where his friends are concerned, he's only just noticed the hostility. "They're okay, they're my nakama."

The glare doesn't disappear from Ace's face, but all the anger does. "Your nakama?"

The rubber boy stalls, and then rubs a hand over Ace's messy hair. "Yeah. My treasure."

The creature turns to Robin again, warily, and she smiles kindly at it. The crew watches it uncoil slowly as the tension bleeds from its shoulders like a sluggishly hemorrhaging wound.

"So this was how Ace was when you were younger?" she asks with patient interest, and Luffy responds to it much more easily than he had to the others' panic and demand, shrugging his shoulders like Sanji's jacket was suddenly too heavy.

"He always had a hard time." The way he's blinking reminds Zoro of a man going into shock, though the brown of Luffy's eyes remains clear. "He was all alone before he met Sabo. It took him a long time to like me." His frown deepens at the boy in his lap. "How do you know?"

The child tilts his head up to look at Luffy, and after a moment, it says, "I can see it. When I concentrate hard on a person, I can see in their heart who they miss most." He touches Luffy's chest, right over the ruined skin, and Luffy flinches in a way that makes Zoro's hand curl reflexively around one of the hilts at his hip. The creature doesn't seem to notice, as it continues, "I was scared before, so I didn't have time to look properly. I could now, though, and change into your last memory of- "

"_No." _It comes from five different people at once, in varying extremes, and the creature rips its hand away immediately. The atmosphere is charged and heated, because Luffy's face went _white._

Hastily, Usopp tries to move the conversation along. "S- So- you can see right into anybody's heart? That's amazing! Why did you- uh, why did you turn into Luffy's brother?"

While it's not projecting Ace's apparently characteristic malice, its eyes are wide and round; with those freckles and a short frown, sitting where it is in Luffy's arms, to anyone on the outside looking in it would probably pass easily as Luffy's brother.

"'Cause he was easiest," it says simply. "His thoughts aren't as confusing as yours. And I could feel his want much better."

Zoro finds that making sense. _The rest of us lost what we did when we were very young_. _Except for Brook, who lost so much all at once he went mad._

But Luffy had a whole childhood to love his brother, the brother who raised him; who sought him out in a sprawling desert to give him a paper that would link them no matter how far from each other they traveled; the brother he _didn't _save, who died in his arms.

The want must have been a raw, aching thing, even under those two healing years.

"I could turn into someone else," the creature offers suddenly, casting its gaze around. It's eyes linger on Chopper, and Luffy's hand shoots out to grab its wrist not a moment later.

"Don't," he says, fierce and unyeilding and very much like himself. "Don't hurt them like that."

Sanji makes a muted sound of rage at the blatant attestation of pain, and Zoro closes his eye for just a moment.

_Idiot captain, suffering on your own._

"Just... turn back into yourself," Luffy continues, with a trace of that charm that drew people in like a moth to a flame. "You were so scared before, we'll help you. There's got to be a place in the world where you can belong. Just- turn back."

He says it with a smile that's as familiar to his friends as the sun, and the little thing blinks up at him reluctantly a moment before its whole body shimmers like the skyline through a heatwave. So quickly they had no hope of watching any sort of transformation, it's a long-eared cat once more, shaking out its fur and flopping its ears as if to reacquaint itself with its own body.

"Thank god," Franky mutters from somewhere to Zoro's right, but the swordsman isn't exactly inclined to agree.

Because the cat makes a soft sound, and reaches up to paw at Luffy's face, to rub away the tears there the best that it can. Robin slides over the rest of the way to put a caring arm around Luffy's shoulders as they shake, and the rest of them stand there in nothing short of despair as their dear captain cries.

"That part is always the hardest," the cat says quietly. "I'm sorry."

Luffy wipes his face and doesn't attempt to smile, hiding behind the brim of his hat; and Zoro wonders for a moment how the cat's magic works. He wonders how real the memories of a stranger could feel, wearing their heart like a suit around yours, knowing everything they knew, everyone they loved.

Zoro watches Luffy, and wonders if the cat changing back felt anything like losing Ace all over again.


End file.
